Strange sixth in­ning sends O’s to de­feat

ASTROS 8, ORIOLES 4

bal­ti­more — Cam­den Yards fell quiet Satur­day night as Hous­ton Astros third base­man Colin Mo­ran was carted off the field af­ter get­ting hit in the face by a foul ball in the sixth in­ning. The crowd then dropped into dis­be­lief when the pinch hit­ter who re­placed him, Mar­win González, hit the even­tual game-win­ning three-run homer off Dar­ren O’Day to send the Orioles to a 8-4 loss.

In a bizarre sixth in­ning, the Astros scored five runs im­me­di­ately af­ter the Orioles scored four in the fifth on two-run homers by Adam Jones and Jonathan Schoop off starter Collin McHugh.

Chris Till­man went into the sixth with a 4-1 lead, then al­lowed a one-out, ground-rule dou­ble to Josh Red­dick be­fore Yuli Gur­riel lofted a ball that hit the rail­ing above the top of the score­board in right field. The ball was ini­tially ruled an RBI dou­ble, but af­ter a crew chief review, Gur­riel was given a two-run homer to cut the Orioles’ lead to one.

That chased Till­man from the game, and O’Day al­lowed back-to-back sin­gles just two pitches into his out­ing. He struck out Alex Breg­man be­fore Mo­ran swung out in front of a first-pitch in­side fast­ball, foul­ing it di­rectly into his face.

Train­ers at­tended to Mo­ran, who strug­gled to get back on his feet and needed help walk­ing to the cart that drove him off the field. Af­ter a de­lay, González stepped to the plate and hit a tow­er­ing three-run homer to right field, com­plet­ing the Orioles’ col­lapse.